Bake Sale Planning
Registering for the bake sale could have dire consequences. So could not registering.
We anticipated.
We prepared.
We made sure our daughters’ records were updated with their true gender, F. Most of us were able to do this before the current administration.
We got wind of upcoming HRT shortages. We anticipated care cuts. We paid out of pocket for extra packs of HRT to stockpile. We found sources of HRT so that no one’s daughter has to go without.
We looked into leaving the country. We stuffed files with information. Some of us who can leave, left. No country is perfect, but some are better for us. Safer, healthier.
Almost casually
We researched schools and jobs for our daughters in and out of the country. We held, and hold, our breath for college applications in blue states, in Canada, Scotland, Spain, New Zealand, Germany, and other places.
But then yesterday one of us, in one of many encrypted chats of anonymous parents of trans teens that have purposefully dull names like “Bake Sale Planning,” asked, almost casually, what to do about Selective Service.
In all of our planning, our conversations with each other in person and on text, meetings with legal advisers and trans elders and providers, over years, it somehow never came up.
We looked it up.
Thirty days
Federal law requires all citizens assigned male at birth, including trans females, to register for Selective Service within 30 days of turning 18 in case of a draft. We did not know. It was our job to know. Our daughters did not know.
They are already in violation.
In the current administration, sex as assigned at birth is also the basis of gender for all federal programs: passports, federal student loans, Social Security, and more.
The current regime won’t last. But our job as parents covers anticipating future regimes and future complications, such as that many of our daughters are not only in violation of this law but also are not white, or they belong to other marginal communities.
Rolls
In a future regime, an algorithm could clock that girls with F markers assigned M at birth were missing from the rolls. The white, cisgender boys missing from the rolls (anecdotally, we know of many cis boys who don’t register or forgot to) may or may not not raise a flag, may or may not face a consequence, may or may not learn of their negligence if they apply for a federal loan or face an infraction.
No cis boys or young men we know have faced a consequence or gotten any kind of notice.
If trans girls who are not white or who are immigrant citizens or members of a minority community are flagged, they are statistically likely to face consequences in a climate hostile to trans people. They are targets.
Crumbs
If our daughters register now, they out themselves.
If they register now they will still have been in violation for a period of time.
If we put off deciding whether to register, quietly hoping this regime is too busy eviscerating government services and starting wars to bother with our bake sale, how small do we make ourselves. How small is a small enough crumb.
Most of us don’t want to leave.
We have daughters with a deep love for this country.
Some of our daughters’ dream jobs would have been to serve in the military.
They could tell you that if a flag is up past sundown, it must be illuminated.
— the Gender Defiant team
Gender Defiant
